wall street

NWPR Books

1:38 pm

Mon May 12, 2014

Then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in 2012. He says he struggled with communicating why he had to help the banks during the financial crisis.

Timothy Geithner was president of the New York Federal Reserve when the Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. A few months later, he became Treasury secretary as the crisis deepened on his watch.

Geithner received mixed reviews of his performance during that time. Wall Street types take him for a champion of excessive government intervention and regulation, while Occupy Wall Street types consider him a tool of the banks. Geithner, however, says he was just trying to get the financial system out of a multifaceted crisis with the threat of a Great Depression looming.

NWPR Books

11:08 am

Tue April 1, 2014

"The stock market is rigged," Michael Lewis tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "It's rigged for the benefit for really a handful of insiders. It's rigged to ... maximize the take of Wall Street, of banks, the exchanges and the high-frequency traders at the expense of ordinary investors."

NWPR Books

11:21 am

Tue February 11, 2014

Most people who follow the headlines are aware of the lifestyles of Wall Street's titans — and the vast bonuses that fund those lives of luxury. Kevin Roose's new Young Money looks at the bottom of that ladder: the college kids who arrived on Wall Street after the economic crash of 2008, prepared to put their noses to the grindstone in the hopes of making it big — or just making a decent living.